Dictionary conventions

Notation

The dictionary makes the distinction between meaning and definition.

Meaning

The meaning of each word is written in English with arguments being represented by vowels in brackets [].

The first time the vowel is used it is followed by one or more Eberban words. These words denote the vowel’s type and constraints. Single letters like a can be used to represent an argument’s generic type.

The same letter used in multiple places means the arguments share the same type.

Parentheses () represent predicate arguments (as opposed to atom or generic arguments), where each argument constraint is listed in between, separated by commas.

Exemples of meanings:

• mi: [E:tce* man] is I/me/a speaker/author.
• bure: [E:tce* den] eats [A:tce* den].
• meon: [E:tce* den] is an apple.
• [E:tcei a] is a (non-empty) set of some things that individualy satisfy [A:(tca a)].
• mua: True if context [E:ma] makes [A:()] true.

Definition

The definition of each word is written in Eberban. Definitions either have an argument list or re-export the places of the left-most predicate in the chain.

Set arguments

Many predicates expect their arguments to be sets, which is expressed in Eberban by the roots starting with tc-. tce in particular states that it is a non-empty set. In definitions, a star * is added next to it when the predicate uses this set in a distributive way, which means that the predicate is also true if we provide a subset. Otherwise it is said to be collective, and a set satisfying the predicate doesn’t necessarily imply that a subset of it will also satisfy the predicate.

Having mainly set arguments like so means that, unless specified, the number of members of the set is left vague. Thus, the sentence mi bure meon could equally mean the following :

• I eat one apple.
• We eat one apple.
• I eat multiple apples.
• We eat multiple apples.

It also doesn’t specify which apples everyone is eating: bure is satisfied if everyone eats at least one of the apples, and every apple is eaten by at least one.

This allows the speaker to be vague by default. This can be made more precise by adding more words.

For simplicity, translations will be written in singular unless it is important to make the distinction.

Glosses ending with :

Glosses should end with : is default chaining behavior chains to a predicate place, meaning the following chain is “wrapped” in it. This can help learners to more quickly understand the structure of a glossed sentence.